Integrity and Political Behavior

by Gary Berg-Cross

How and why Eric Cantor lost to (convincingly) to a Tea Party challenger has been a big story in Washington. The political elites and chattering class of pundits didn't see it coming, but flash-mob hypothesized about it. One early theory of the “shocked and bewildered”, as Time put it, was religious and cultural in tone:

“One of the more fascinating threads that emerged from the cacophony of ideas put forward in the days following the primary was the effort to find a Jewish dimension to the story. Cantor, the House Majority Leader, was the highest ranking Jewish lawmaker in American history, with aspirations to be Speaker of the House. When one adds to that the fact that Brat is a religious Christian who speaks frequently of his faith, the temptation to uncover a Jewish angle became irresistible. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the leading Jewish weekly the Forward, and a variety of other publications duly turned out articles examining, from every perspective, the Jewish and religious sides of the election…. David Wasserman, a normally sensible political analyst, got things going with a much-quoted statement to the Times suggesting that anti-Semitism was at play in Cantor’s defeat. Cantor was culturally out of step with his redrawn district, according to Wasserman, “and part of this plays into his religion. You can’t ignore the elephant in the room.” Sensationalist headlines soon followed. The Week, a news magazine, ran a story entitled “Did Eric Cantor lose because he’s Jewish?” And the Forward ran an opinion column with the headline “Did Eric Cantor Lose Because He’s Jewish? You Betcha.”

But there was no elephant in the room. There wasn’t even a mosquito in the room. “Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, a writer and lecturer, was President of the Union for Reform Judaism from 1996 to 2012. His writings are collected at ericyoffie.com.

Culture may have played a part (Eric Cantor was called the leading advocate for Jewish/Israeli issues in Congress) and we’ll have to see if conservative Jewish pols and evangelical Christian pols start to diverge. But another factors seems to be Cantor being perceived as lacking in integrity and political deftness. As Time also noted:

“Cantor’s problem was less ideology and more a sense that he stood more for his own ambition than for any definable policies. He frequently reinvented himself with splashy policy speeches, and toured the country raising money and gathering chits for an eventual run for House Speaker.”

There are several character issues here about what Cantor really stood for (aside from what some presume his conservative Jewish culture.). These were noted by a number of observers:

“[It's a] serious wake up call to all incumbents,” said Scott Reed, the top political strategist for the establishment-friendly Chamber of Commerce. “Time for candidates to run like they are running for sheriff… not prime minister.”

I think this is a point to note. In a functioning democracy the welfare of constituents (there perception o this at least) are the ultimate law, at least every 2, 4 or 6 years.

To his up close constituents Cantor showed a mix of avarice, as demonstrated in his numerous steak feasts mixed with a hint of phoniness, folly & cowardice. It’s was, in part, a classic words vs behavior issue. Cantor tried to have it both ways on so many things.  Was he loyal to his base and constituents or to Wall St. and lobbyists?  What does his behavior show?

What did he stand for on immigration reform? His early rhetoric on last year’s government shutdown that had excited the Tea-base (and sunk GOP’s poll numbers)

ended up making him look weak.  It was not enough that Cantor pose as a tea party conservative—his actions must be tea party peevish.  Without real action the veneer, the sheen of words wears off. As Cicero said, “false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.”

Cantor like many of the privileged pols we have now (Jewish or otherwise) forgot that reputation and integrity are important. People expect that when in power you will follow through on what you say you’re going to do. It's walking the walk.

Cantor’s credibility eroded rather than built over time if only because people who heard his words could see the contrast to his actions as well as his paid for steak dinners. Perhaps you still can't fool all American voters for very long. Something must ring true.

In the end people and policy are more important than politics...or ideology.

The Challenge of Confronting Visionary Futures

By Gary Berg-Cross

When Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson penned the Humanist Manifesto II in the middle of the Viet Nam war (1973) they noted opportunities for the rapidly approaching 21^st century based on “dramatic scientific, technological, and ever-accelerating social and political changes crowd our awareness.”  They went on to talk about virtually human domination of the planet, moon exploration, and dramatic travel and communication advances. It all suggested  that  we stand at the dawn of a new age. It was one they characterized as “ready to move farther into space and perhaps inhabit other planets.” Well the movie 2001 certainly was in that spirit, but in 2012 we remain far short of that vision.

And it is not just space exploration.  The promise of technology suited to wise control of our environment hasn’t been promoted and we face a changed planet that could bring hurricane level flooded coasts on a permanent basis.

To be sure we have done a good job enhancing communication technology, but that gets used to let us shout alarms of problems rather than systematically solve really big systemic problems like putting poverty on the run or achieving what the Manifesto signaled as “an abundant and meaningful life.”  At times technological advances seem to go sideways towards profit as opposed to investing in the solution of large problems. “Shale boom derails U.S. investments in clean coal technology” reads a recent headline in the vein.

Why haven’t we done a better job of providing for the common good?  One problem is that large scale efforts (poverty, climate, renewable energy, space exploration) require long term commitments to visions. We simply lack policy frameworks (economic and otherwise), social organization and agreements needed to advance such large-scale projects to bring about visions.  On some issue, such as energy we are maintaining the status quo, rather than going with the new. This  makes narrow plutocratic sense based on old economic models.  Fractured policies and entrenched interests with political connections make change difficult and expensive. 

Take the issue and promise of residential,rooftop solar. According to the Department of Energy the US has more than 18,000 jurisdictions at state & local levels that have a say in how rooftop solar is rolled out. In Germany, at a latitude equal to Maine’s, they have addressed the problem as a whole society and reached a working consensus on solar's importance.  In Germany the price of installed rooftop solar has fallen to $2.24 per watt and on a sunny day in May, rooftop solar provided all of Germany's power needs for two hours. In the US it was $9 a watt in 2006 and is now closer to $5 and if commercial industrial installations are included the national installed price plummets to $3.45 a watt (Solar Energy Industries Association, a Washington trade group).

This point on the organizational rather than technical nature of problems is made in Solar energy is ready, the U.S. isn't which notes:

The trouble is, many of the big, investor-owned utilities that provide about 85 percent of America's electricity see solar as both a technical challenge and a long-term threat to their 100-year-old profit models. And the lack of a national energy policy means regulation of solar is up to states, public service commissions, and a wealth of local governments and bureaucracies - many of whom have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

The rule of thumb had been that once rooftop installations made up 15 percent of the power on a given circuit, utilities could stay new connections until residents undertook an engineering study - costing as much as $50,000 - that showed their addition wouldn't destabilize the power grid. The hidden costs of obtaining permits and regulators' approval to install rooftop panels is a big reason the United States lags behind Germany, which leads the world in rooftop installations, with more than 1 million.

On big problems is that we need to formulate new plans of action and response and get some agreement. Such agreements may even cross national boundaries and so hint of some global governance based on common values. Follow ups to Humanist Manifesto II have taken modest steps in proposing things in that direction. It’s a long haul and vision starts with discussion and understanding of the issues. 

Some of each of this will be afforded at the discussion of an Agenda for a Democratized Economy So it is the People’s Economy Saturday, Nov 3rd, from (2-4 p.m.) when the MDC chapter of WASH hosts  Margaret Flowers & Kevin Zeese (co-directors of Its Our Economy).  This will be at the Wheaton regional library 11701 Georgia Avenue  Wheaton, MD 20902.

Images

1. Dawn of Man from 2001: http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/
2. 2001 Logo: http://www.azadtimes.com/blog/2012/10/28/weekly-classics-2001-a-space-odyssey/
3. The promise of Solar panels: http://www.perspectivesonglobalissues.com/building-a-solar-india-the-promise-of-solar-power/
4. Plutocrats and Poverty: http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/10/wow-the-energy-is-intense-2483010.html

Discussing an Agenda for a Democratized Economy So it is the People’s Economy

By Gary Berg-Cross

Saturday, Nov 3rd, from (2-4 p.m.) the MDC chapter of WASH will have a talk Margaret Flowers & Kevin Zeese (co-directors of Its Our Economy) entitled: "Shifting Economic and Political Power to the People. ”  This will be at the Wheaton regional library 11701 Georgia Avenue  Wheaton, MD 20902.


As attorney Kevin Zeese notes the Roman philosopher/statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero defined “Freedom” as “participation in power.” By that standard most of we Americans are not free since do not participate in real power and decision making. Yes, we get to vote every now and then, but this seems a distant form of influence now.  Real power resides in organizations like the Bank of America which has spent millions lobbying the US Congress to pass laws that benefit then directly or indirectly by deregulating industry. One example cited is their spending millions to oppose bills like the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights &  the Foreclosure Prevention Act, Helping Families Save their Homes Act, Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act, all of which would have directly benefited consumers and hence the Public. 

Self advancement and deregulation explains in part why our system could not avoid a Bush-era economic/financial system collapse in 2008.  This followed the longer, contextual 30 year decline of basically stagnant and minimized worker wages. The result has been to produce a numbing, record household, personal and educational debt. 

An article on the Its Our Economy site described the scene this way:

At the same time working Americans saw jobs disappearing, hours reduced, salaries shrinking and more under-employment.  They also saw their retirement savings disappear, 5 million foreclosures, record bankruptcies, record poverty and shrinking housing values.  The cost of everything from health care, to food to energy kept rising while incomes fell. And, the social safety net, limited as it was compared to other developed countries, was shredded, a process continuing as austerity budgets take hold across the United States.

Why doesn’t the economy work better for most Americans? 

One particular chicken and egg problem seems to be the growing wealth gap caused in part by stagnant wages and debt. This inequality creates an imbalance of actual intertwined economic & political power. Eggs that hatch from such confluence craft economic and political policies that seemed designed to extract wealth from the economy and direct it at a favored few. The result is a form of structural poverty leading to struggle on many fronts (education, health care, home ownership, saving etc.). 

Margaret & Kevin will describe a 20 point:“ strategy and tactics to shift economic power, and thereby political power, to the people. “

As time permits they may cover parts of their 20 point agenda to stabilizes the economy in the short term & turn things around from misguided policy to a more sustainable democratic economy. The outlined action evolved from a Prosperity Agenda (www.ProsperityAgenda.US) written in 2009 to provide for a democratized economy that combines policies that have proven to be effective along with innovative new solutions.  Here are highlights of the proposal.

*  *  *

New, Efficient, Clean Energy Economy
1. The foundation for a new economy is a carbon-free/nuclear-free energy economy; that distributes energy production down to individual homes and businesses and uses energy efficiently.  
2. The U.S. automobile industry, recovering from near collapse, is caught in the web of long-term costs for its retired and current employees, especially the uncontrollable cost of health care and rapidly changing transit needs.  Further, the auto industry has to move toward the new green economy, instead continuing to build SUV’s rather than hybrids and electric cars.
3. Infrastructure in the United States is literally falling apart and not keeping up with the needs for a sustainable carbon-free/nuclear-free energy economy. Long term investment is needed for new infrastructure. 
4. The U.S. and world need to dramatically reduce carbon emissions. A critical step is to tax carbon emissions at the source as they enter the economy, i.e. tax coal, oil and gas for their emissions

5. Develop local economies to reduce use of fossil fuel in transport and allow local businesses and communities to flourish. 
Creating Jobs, Providing Housing, Health Care and Building Local Economies
6. Individuals as well as state and local governments are in fragile financial positions and thus in need of an economic and social safety net.
7. Another tool for developing local economies, particularly around housing and land use. This is a nonprofit corporation which acquires and manages land on behalf of the residents of a community.
8. To address housing we must stop the mortgage crisis by requiring mortgage holders to reconfigure mortgages to allow homeowners to stay in their homes and not lose them to foreclosure. 
9. Face up to the health care crisis which is approaching 20% of U.S. GDP.  The United States has the most cost-inefficient health care system in the world.

End the Wars and Reduce the Military Budget
10. End the Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libyan wars and reduce military spending.  The United States needs to end a foreign policy based on empire and militarism

Re-making Finance, Shared Prosperity
11. Transform corporate welfare into taxpayer investment. Even before the current bailout, the U.S. government provided hundreds of billions of dollars annually to big business interests in loans, tax breaks, under-valued access to federal lands and a host of other mechanisms. 
12. Democratize access to financing by re-making the Federal Reserve and re-forming the nation’s money system. The Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors leadership is the exact opposite of democracy; it is control of the money system by the wealthy few, plutocracy.
13. Democratize corporate power by increasing shareholder rights, expanding the rights of shareholders to choose directors of corporations and submit resolutions to set the direction and priorities of the corporation they invest in and of which they are part owners. End corporate personhood, so that corporations do not have the rights of human beings. 
Financing the Government: Taxes and Deficits
14. Reconsider the tax structure to make it more equitable. 
15. Be mindful of the deficit and debt at all levels of government but also recognize there times when government must spend to rebuild the economy. 
Workers Rights
16. Democratize the workplace by encouraging employee-owned businesses
17. Reduce the work week with no reduction in pay. Before the economic collapse, 7% of the U.S. GDP was based on consumer buying.  Since the early 1970s wages have been flat in the U.S. and the consumer economy has continued because of two-income families, increasing personal debt and cheap goods from abroad.  This is unsustainable
18. Establish a national guaranteed income for all Americans based on the model proposed by Richard Nixon in 1969.
International Trade and Finance
19. End World Bank and IMF dominance (which means ending U.S. and European dominance) of the world financial markets.  These entities need competition and regional banks in Latin America, Asia, Africa and other regions should encouraged as should stabilization funds to assure currency stabilization.  These organizations need to be democratized, made more transparent and include appropriate representation and decision-making by developing nations.
20. Remake international trade from corporate trade to people’s trade.  The current rhetoric calls trade agreements “Free Trade” but in reality they are trade agreements that favor corporations over the interests of labor, the environment and consumers.  Trade agreements need to be redesigned so they serve the interests of people and the planet rather than the interests of corporations. 

Kevin Zeese, co-director of Its Our Economy, is an attorney who has been a political activist since graduating from George Washington Law School in 1980.  He works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy.

Margaret Flowers, co-director of Its Our Economy, is a Maryland pediatrician. After graduation from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1990 and completion of pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Flowers worked first as a hospitalist and then in private practice. She left practice in 2007 to advocate full-time for a single payer health care system at both the state and national levels.

Images

Hierarchy of Power: http://griid.org/2012/09/11/a-grand-rapids-power-analys/

Carbon Democracy: http://www.amazon.com/Carbon-Democracy-Political-Power-Age/dp/1844677451

Democracy and Alternatives: http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2011_11_01_archive.html

Kevin: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/topic/economicjustice/newswire/archive44.shtml

Margaret: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/topic/economicjustice/newswire/archive44.shtml

A Philosopher for our Times - John Dewey

By Gary Berg-Cross

John Shook will be talking Saturday Dec. 7^th at the WASH MDC chapter about "The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response." As part of this we are likely to hear a bit about John Dewey and Pragmatism as evidenced by his recent book, John Dewey's Philosophy of Spirit by John R. Shook and James A. Good, published by Fordham University Press, in 2010.

John has woven together the threads of some of Dewey philosophical concepts and values into a poem.

A Philosopher's Faith
Inspired by John Dewey

My person returns to unwind all its threads,
Woven by language into the habits of heads;
An old wearied head must bow down one final eve,
But my lively thought shines in cloth I helped to weave.

Your gift by my leave is but some seeds yet to grow,
Whose value was found in times of need long ago;
Sow all of these seeds in our vast garden with care,
Protect and defend the greater harvest to share.

To view such swift change, see truths melt under new suns,
To watch how scared souls kept on refining their guns;
My nation was home despite such strife with no cease,
My freedom was here while humbly searching for peace.

By trial did I live, by more trial find my thought’s worth,
My death you will get if you conceive no new birth;
No life without doubt, for the best fail now and then,
No rest for my faith, that each new day tests again.

--John Shook

It’s fair to say that I’m a fan or John Dewey’s life and thoughts. I was dimly aware of him as one of America's premier "public intellectuals,". I had run into philosophic and pragmatic influence on progressive education, which served as a testing ground for some of his psychological-philosophical thinking.Some of that was readily available

“It was no accident”, he observed in Philosophy of education (see Middle works of John Dewey 1912-13, “that like himself many great philosophers had taken a keen interest in the problems of education because there was ‘an intimate and vital relation between the need for philosophy and the necessity for education.’ If philosophy was wisdom, a vision of ‘the better kind of life to be led’, then consciously guided education was the praxis of the philosopher. ‘If philosophy is to be other than an idle and unverifiable speculation, it must be animated by the conviction that its theory of experience is a hypothesis that is realized only as experience is actually shaped in accord with it. And this realization demands that man’s dispositions be made such as to desire and strive for that kind of experience.’ The shaping of dispositions might take place in various institutions, but in modern societies the school was the most crucial, and as such it was an indispensable arena for the shaping of a philosophy into a ‘living fact’ “(Dewey, 1912-13, p. 298, 306-7 quoted in JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952) by Robert B. Westbrook).

My formal education didn’t include much of Dewey’s thinking but his unifying concept critiquing the simple Reflex Arc concept. In his "Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896) paper, Dewey advanced a Functional School of Psychology by integrating his early Hegelianism with William James' recent take on evolutionary naturalism. Dewey's critique argues made the point that the idea of a stimulus based reflex arc account of human action fails because it contains an apparent logical paradox based on physical-mental dualism. What really is needed is an intentional level of analysis including feedback as the R of response affects the environment and changes the stimulus situation - see Figure on the left).

An "explanatory" account of animal or human action, he argues, needs to include this larger, intentional unit of analysis, which reconceptualized sensori-motor coordination.

Thus he added a cognitive, coordinating aspect that transcended and reformed old dualistic theories. A more thoughtful reflex arc provided the space and structure to reconceptualize stimulus-response behavior into a cognitive theory of habit. It emphasized active conceptualization and adaptive reconstruction as part of learning, an idea pursued in his experimental educational endeavors.

As a graduate student dating a Teacher’s College student at Columbia I got a bit closer to Dewey, whose name I could see along with other famous educators on engraved on the building. I had time later in life to select one of Dewey’s works as vacation reading and there I discovered that Dewey’s middle and later books were all on topics of interest to me (How we think ,1910, Democracy and education, 1916, Experience and Nature, 1925 etc.).

It was only more recently that I learned enough to see Dewey life and progression as a whole and understand how his early work and teaching in Psychology (e.g. pushing social theory beyond an instincts explanation) became an adjunct to his philosophy and work on broader public problems. His reconstruction idea for philosophy reflected his own life’s journey. When asked if he would update a book for a 2^nd edition he was known it say, “it will be a different book.” His ideas were always evolving.

Coming from an idealist background of Kant and Hegel, Dewey intellectual life was tempered by the pragmatist influence of Charles Peirce and William James. Trained in emerging experimental psychology Dewey constructed a natural philosophy in which vague concepts of mind were forged into more defined cognitive models. In these human thought was understood as instrumental practical problem-solving, which advances incrementally by testing rival hypotheses against experience in order to achieve the "warranted assertability" that grounds coherent action.

Dewey continually updated to his ideas in a search for truth and progress. The process of inquiry was central to his stance addressing the problems of society that consumed him. We can also say that he provided many good ideas to the modern Secular Humanism movement along with scientific/pan-objectiveness. In the 50s his voice could still be heard on cultural controversies and Dewey still provides a good model for the combined role of philosophy and philosophy to address the larger problems of society. Updated psychological models of human bias are one type of experimental result that Dewey might have appreciated and used to guide coherent action to make us a better society.

Lakoff’s Framing Advice to Occupy Wall Street (#OWS) - We love America & are here to fix it with your help

by Gary Berg-Cross

My past blogs have included references to George Lakoff’s idea on Frames - cognitive-metaphorical structures (such as geospatial words) routinely used to organize thought and interpret the world. So we conceptualize well-being as wealth, both of which plug into pre-existing notions that trigger emotional responses. It is easy then to see wealthy people as good, healthy folks.

I've also blogged on the Occupy movement and Oct2011. In a recent Truthout Op-Ed Lakoff provided advice (by request) on how the protester movement occupying Zuccotti Park near Wall Street can avoid being framed by others with differing political interests. Lakoff believes that framing is epistemic – it influences the methods we use to understand the world and our concept of truth. In combination with language it central to making clear says what the character of something like a movement is. A proper frame may help solve that criticism that others don't know what the movement’s ideas and objectives are. But to do this effectively we need some principles by which a movement can properly frame itself. I found that some of these principles suggestive of ways that Secular Humanists might employ frames (We are all Citizens of the World or We are part of nature) to help with a wider understanding of our values. Perhaps that will be a topic for another time.

In advice to OWS Lakoff first notes that in charting political & financial action frames often evoke competing moral systems. In short, a movement that seeks some political and financial system influence needs to understand politics as part of a moral dimension that is framed in its language. Political figures, as well as movements and their spokes people, tend to make policy statements/recommendations with implied or explicit claims about what is the right thing to do. Appeals to the benefits of Capitalist System or a Democratic System claim to do more good than harm and are thus moral statements. You can see this in the OWS movement's statements with an implied sense of the common good. The lead one is "Democracy Should Be About the 99 Percent". Others are aimed at progressive causes such as the idea that strong Wages & Unions Make a Strong America and related grievances - middle-class wages have not gone up significantly in 30 years and there is conservative/corporate pressure to lower them. In criticizing the top 1% an implied claim is that they are just in it for themselves and can get away with unfair gains it since they have power.

Implied in such things are values and principles fit the common sense claim that “Some moral principles or other lie behind every political policy agenda.” We might ask broadly what are they for the OWS folks and what are they for their “opponents” (just as we might for Secular Humanists and our opponents).

Broadly Lakoff sees “Two Competing Moral Framing Systems” each with political slants and differing idea of democracy. The bulk of American conservatives have a particular moral system that you see in the actions and mentality of Wall Street. Lakoff’s list of these includes:

1. The primacy of self-interest 0 yes they are in it for themselves but this is seen as moral

a. Of course financial folks want big bonuses – well all do.'

2. There is Individual responsibility, but not broad social responsibility outside the core group. It’s OK if I can game the system to advantage

3. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power.

a. A moral hierarchy of who is "deserving," defined by success within the system.

b. We in Wall Street are on top. You are just jealous.

And the highest principle is the

Rigid primacy of this particular moral/truth system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign policy and especially government.

Derived from these we have the idea of Conservative governance in their version "democracy" - a system of governance and elections that fits this model. Strong leaders who see decisions and moral judgement in system of black and white, devalue compromise which is seen as surrender etc.

The alternative view of democracy has a progressive with more of a social frame:

1. Democracy starts with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one's family, community, country, people in general and the planet.

2. The role of government is to protect and
empower all citizens equally via The Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education, scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on.

3. Nobody makes it one their own.

a. As Elizabeth Warren said, if you got wealthy, you depended on The Public and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future.

b. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. We’re in this together

4. Corporations exist to make life better for most people.

a. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private.

OK so we have 2 frame systems. What should the Occupy movement do? Lakoff suggests that OWS should take an approach to policy that follows from its own moral focus. Thus OWS should frame the following types of messages:

1. We Love America. We're Here to Fix It

That is OWS is a patriotic movement, based on a deep and abiding love of the Public, that is the country. This combats the idea that patriotism that just about the self-interests of individuals. There is a level of the Public Good.

“Do Americans care about other citizens, or mainly just about themselves? That's what love of America is about. I, therefore, think it is important to be positive, to be clear about loving America, seeing it in need of fixing and not just being willing to fix it, but being willing to take to the streets to fix it. A populist movement starts with the people seeing that they are all in the same boat and being ready to come together to fix the leaks.”

Publicize the Public

Get the word about The Public out. Democracy being about the 99 Percent is in this frame.

“nobody makes it purely on their own without The Public, that is, without public infrastructure, the justice system, health, education, scientific research, protections of all sorts, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets ... That is a truth to be told day after day. It is an idea that must take hold in public discourse. It must go beyond what I and others have written about it and beyond what Elizabeth Warren has said in her famous video. The Public is not opposed to The Private. The Public is what makes The Private possible. And it is what makes freedom possible. Wall Street exists only through public support. It has a moral obligation to direct itself to public needs.

There is also a more practical political message to formulate based on the recent Tea Party experience. They:

“solidified the power of the conservative worldview via elections. OWS will have no long-term effect unless it, too, brings its moral focus to the 2012 elections. Insist on supporting candidates that have your overall moral views, no matter what the local issues are.”

The message is that money directs our politics and that is not for the common good. In a democracy, that must end to move towards the common good. A long tern solution is that we need publicly supported elections.

Proper framing will help us get there.

Arguing about Historical Generalizations and Conclusions

by Gary Berg-Cross

In general most people prefer generalities and general conclusions. It makes life simpler.

We may come to them honestly, naively or via various jumps in reasoning. These may include some mixture of belief and intuition. The honest and scientific way comes by inductive reasoning, or what most of us call logical induction. Formal induction is a kind of constructive reasoning based on evidence from individual instances. These provide the premises of the inductive conclusion. In theory and applied in formal mathematics it is clear and can seem simple.

The idea is to reason logically from factual premises. But in practice, when applied to the human world, it is more typically more complex than that. Any intro course is Social Science suggests this. Just think of the attempts to make historical generalizations. Courses are full of them, but many historical generalizations are suspect as inductive simplifications that leave something out. I got to thinking on this seeing a generalization about Religion and Democracy in a comment from a recent blog discussion on Falwell’s Law. This drifted into discussing the premise that Christianity was anti-democratic. A launching point was Rushdooney's book which is critical of Democracy. Some quotes of his included generalizations that-"the heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in church and state ... Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies."

Another is the flat out assertion that "Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic.” A commentator agreed and took a strong position that Christianity (but I imagine he would agree with a broader view of all the religions based on the Book) as necessarily anti-democratic. Two types of historical evidence, edited slightly to illustrate the implied a logical argument, were offered:

• Christianity is everywhere devoted to what he called the “dictatorship” of the clergy, and

• A close reading of the Ten Commandments, one Judeo source of social priorities, reveals that the majority of the commandments support this religio-centric view.

We can argue about this, but agree that these indicate some degree of support (inductive probability) for the conclusion. We might liberally formalize them like this to expose some of the reasoning:

• A close inspection has ~60% of the Judeo 10 commandments dictate religious control.
• Judeo-inspired Religious groups follow the Judeo 10 commandments.
• Therefore, Judeo-inspired Religious (instance) Christianity dictates religious control.
  

Classical induction focus on simple premises and the ones I’ve penned above are getting complex. What do we mean by “close inspection”? I’ve added an arbitrary assertion that 60% of the commandments are categorized that they are about religious control whatever that is. And we might add some supporting facts that are in the mind when understanding such an argument. There is often background knowledge and implied things that might further support this or a more specific conclusion. For example, the more “fundamental” a group is the original religious formulations, the closer they may be to a support religio-centric rather than democratic values and control. In practice the inductive process leading to a conclusion can be pretty messy since evidence, especially historical evidence, may go in several directions. Topics that we argue about, such as the above relation of Religions to Democracy are often not unitary things, but composites and mixtures. The 10 Commandments are mixtures of religious adherence and moral suggestion.

The parts of the Bible or Koran that groups look at and the value they give them can vary. The history and experience of a religious group can be formalized as part of their organization approach. Quakers are not like Falwell’s Christian group. All of these make conclusions more complex and tentative. My mind often travels these reasoning paths when I am confronted with historical assertions.One that bugs the Infidel community is the generalized claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. Religious people may prefer this conclusion.As evidence they point to a selective set of “facts” (historical knowledge) to make the case. So they might use a fact that many founders attended church. But here the fact needs to be understood in social and historical context.Bishop William Meade, explained their behavior this way: "Even Mr. Jefferson, and George Wythe, who did not conceal their disbelief in Christianity, took their parts in the duties of vestrymen, the one at Williamsburg, the other at Albermarle; for they wished to be men of influence."

So from attendance, an historical fact that often can be checked, you cannot conclude that they held a tradition belief. The real historical knowledge seems limited to pretty specific statements about specific actors in concrete local circumstances, but from this people generalize and sometimes wildly about what the behavior "means".

In other cases they have made up facts which support their conclusions.

An infamous example is the set of stories create around George Washington. He may not have had Paine’s Deist convictions, but he was far from a traditional Christian. He, along with other founders, was greatly admired in the mid-19^th century. Having non-traditional heroes was a great problem for Christian preachers during a time when they were pushing a new awakening and revival that would give us fundamentalism. They wanted the much admired Washington to be on their side. Their beliefs may have been so strong that they could convince themselves that it was true. In any event they portrayed him in stories and art as a person on strong Christian beliefs. Think of the made up image of Washington praying in the snow. A key fabricator of these propaganda pieces was Christian preacher Mason Locke Weems. Among other things Preacher Weems crafted a death bed story for Washington’s saying that:

"Washington folded his arms decently on his breast, then breathing out 'Father of mercies, take me to thyself,' - he fell asleep." Like other things that Christian fundamentalists sat about Washington, this seems not to be true. In this case we can look to the account from Tobias Lear, Washington's secretary. Lear was with Washington's when he died and wrote this:

"About ten o'clk he made several attempts to speak to me before he could effect it, at length he said, -'I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead.' I bowed assent, for I could not speak. He then looked at me again and said, 'Do you understand me?' I replied, 'Yes.' 'Tis well,' said he."About ten minutes before he expired (which was between ten and eleven o'clk) his breathing became easier; he lay quietly….”It is also true that Humanists may subscribe to over generalizations base on their world view, although I don’t find them making up stories so readily. that what we now call the Renaissance encouraged “innovative thinking"? Or maybe it was more of a substitution and elevation of a new form of thinking mixed with some innovation. What evidence could prove this? Perhaps it is very much dependent on what you mean by innovation. It's useful to take a skeptical stance about such things as I wrote in another blog on shallow skepticism and another on conservative quotes. The problem with statements like these is the sweep and unity of their generalization. They imply that some complex phenomena which we call the Renaissance (or American culture) were essentially uniform social realities.
This papers over the forms of variation that certainly existed in the phenomena Renaissance, among American founding and in Christianity. Simple generalizations are useful for everyday discussion, especially to draw up side, but thoughtful discussion tolerates more complexity.